We are now in the era of collaborative building, enjoying the benefits of many popular open source projects which power every company’s software stack. This new behavioral trait also permeates through every organization’s internal development processes. Developers benefit from not only asynchronous time advantages, but also from peer knowledge and the review process to produce high quality software.
There are a few activities in a software engineer’s life that have become a part of their daily routine, that they continue to do as they grow more senior and accomplished, that bridges them with other engineers in an organization; Code review is one of these activities in the collaboration layer. It is one of the most critical, collaborative activities in the modern software development cycle. Yet, if we analyze daily developer workflows from a productivity lens, we routinely hear that many developers get blocked waiting for code reviews, reviewers struggle to review enormous volumes of code effectively, and teams waste a great deal of time on unnecessary iterations. Simply put, code review tooling and processes today are still not great.
As we studied and tracked how progressive tech companies handle the code review process and we learned that small atomic commits with faster and independent iterations have worked well. In fact, FAANG companies have built their own custom internal tooling around this concept. We therefore wished someone democratized such tooling, and have been waiting patiently for such a solution; welcome Graphite!
Perhaps no one appreciates this need for better code review tooling more than Merrill, Greg, and Tomas, the cofounders of Graphite. The trio actually originally set out to build a different developer tool, but after becoming accustomed to the powerful developer tools they’d used at their former employers, they felt that the existing tooling for code review was lacking. So they built their own internal tool to be more efficient and productive with how they shipped code. They formalized this concept of small atomic commits as “stacked PRs.”, or stacked Pull Requests.
What started as an internal tool would quickly grow a life of its own. Their friends at other companies who also felt unsatisfied by the existing tooling for code review would ask to use this internal tool. And they would go on to tell others. Eventually, the community brewing around their tool could no longer be ignored. Hence Graphite was born. Merrill, Greg, and Tomas took the bold step to stop working on their original idea, and double down on making code reviews better for everyone else.
As we spoke to users of Graphite, we consistently heard how impactful it is for their teams. Numerous engineers told us how they couldn’t imagine going back to a world without stacked PRs. The improvements to the quality of code were undeniable with less stale code, fewer team members being blocked on reviews, and reviewers providing better feedback. Managers even mention stacked PRs as a powerful framework for training junior developers to spend more time planning and breaking down their work upfront. All in all, we believe every Graphite user experienced a faster development process and higher quality of work output. We believe Graphite will become a key product in the modern DevEx stack of every organization.
So, we are excited to be backing Merrill, Greg, and Tomas, and the entire Graphite team as they build solutions to make developers more productive. Every engineering team who wants to be more efficient and effective around how they perform code reviews should be checking out the Graphite product.
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The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. In addition, this content may include third-party advertisements; a16z has not reviewed such advertisements and does not endorse any advertising content contained therein.
This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly as well as unannounced investments in publicly traded digital assets) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/.
Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information.